


Naxos

by Halja



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Violence, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Violence, Wedding Fluff, kind of, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 01:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halja/pseuds/Halja
Summary: Ariadne meets Dionysus.





	Naxos

 

 

 

 

His face is a mask painted by the flickering flames of the fires and the light and shadow they cast in their endless dance.

He’s all wine-red cheeks and tousled curls and dark, dark eyes. So dark, in fact, that she thinks she might look too deep into them and drown, and be lost forever to the world, to the heavens and the stars above, and even to the gods themselves.

But after all, she’s always been fairly good at finding her way back in the darkness. She’s proven that time and time again, even if in the end it wasn’t much use to her. Besides, drowning isn’t the worst way to die, really. She should know that. It wasn’t _drowning_ she heard guards and servants whisper about in hushed voices, every seventh year since she was a child and still innocent.

There is no guarantee that he _won’t_ rip her to shreds or eat her alive, though. His smile his radiant, white-hot and golden, and it doesn’t clash with his eyes. Not if you really pay attention, anyway. It compliments them, in a way. It makes her think of teeth sharper than those she can see in his mouth and blood under his clean fingernails, of the wild beasts he wears like his finest garments to equally hide and reveal deceptively soft flesh and smooth, perfumed skin.

And yet when he says, _be my bride,_ she’s not frightened. It sounds like _be my queen,_ and _that_ sounds as honest as a god of masks and lies can get.

Perhaps it’s because she has nowhere else to go and nothing else to be. Perhaps it’s because she’s twice disgraced and utterly hopeless, because she’s been a traitor and then she’s been betrayed, because she’s cold and hungry and she longs to stop wailing and start raging, and so even burning herself alive along with his followers in his mad dances or letting him take her apart piece by piece and eat her raw seems better than being stuck again on some empty little rock in the middle of the sea with only her tears for company. Perhaps it’s not that, at all.

Whatever it is, she takes a deep breath and dips right into his shadowy gaze and kisses that dangerous, glowing smile away from his red lips, and then she sinks her hands and her fingertips and her nails into his flowing hair, his shoulders, his chest, his hips, and everywhere else she can reach. He lets her do as she pleases, apparently content to just hold her – and he holds her so close and so tight that the heat of his body is almost too much to take, but then again so is its weight and smell and taste – until she melts against him and muffles a strangled sob in the crook of his bronzed shoulder.

Later, when all the fires have already turned to ash, she’s still alive. She feels like she’s more alive now than she’s ever been, actually.

When she tells him, he laughs, cups her cheek in his soft hand and kisses her again.

Later still, he crowns her with stars, to give her what he says is her rightful place the sky.

 

 

 

 


End file.
